Little shop of hoppers

 This week we're proud to announce the opening of a new shop ! For some time I've been working with my partner Rich on ideas for puppets but things kept getting in the way. As tends to be the case, it was something largely unrelated that actually got the ball rolling. It may not come as much of a surprise to those of you who follow this blog that I sometimes have trouble sleeping. We bought in some hops to make a sleep pillow for me which in turn inspired us to have a bit of a play with some scraps of fabric to make little night-time companions.

 

 We've made up a few using rose petals and lavender as well as the hops to get the shop started. This being us, there's a nod to primitive folk art dolls which are both fascinating and a little disturbing :) We've deliberately made them a little rough and ready so they have character.

 Of course, once we had the toy box out we couldn't just stop there....Rich has discovered he has quite a talent for soft sculpture so we've just listed the rather kindly Old Man Burlap, complete with beard and staff.

In fact we've had so much fun we have had to rearrange the flat to give us and our new friends some room :) We hope to bring you working puppets in the new year so watch this space !

I say potato.....

 

 I think one of the reasons art fascinates people is the way it allows you to see for a moment through someone elses' eyes, to get a new perspective. This goes for us artists too so I'm especially excited to bring you two very different takes on the same thing.

Tina Mammoser is a friend of ours and very kindly invited Rich and I to share her holiday spot at Saltwick Bay for a weekend. When we went exploring, we found the wreck of the Admiral Von Tromp framed perfectly by black rock. Naturally, neither of us could resist so we agreed to work from the same image and publish our results together.

Rock and Wreck by Tina Mammoser

Tinas' approach couldn't be more different - while I'm driving myself batty fiddling about with every pebble in the landscape, she gets straight to the heart of the matter. The focus in her picture is different too - Tina has used the strong lines of the wreck to frame the fantastic Black Nab to great effect. You can view Tinas' work including Rock and Wreck here .

Wreck and Rock by Karen Ruffles

On the flip side, I was most excited about the looming hulk of the wreck and included Black Nab in silhouette to help place the wreck. I used carbon pencil for the wreck itself so it's an even darker black than the surrounding rocks. You can see this piece over in my Etsy shop .

For further amusement, you can read Tinas' blog post here

Snails for all :)

 This week has been a very exciting one for me - I received my very first professional prints of three of my original drawings. I've been looking for months at various printers, choosing papers and getting test prints done before finally settling on the combination that I felt would give the best result across the board.

 I went for Hahnemuhle paper as it has a beautiful smooth white surface similar to the paper I draw on. It also holds black incredibly well so the prints are crisp and dramatic without losing any of the detail in the original.

 I had the snail and the hermit crab done as a set since they are the most popular images in my shop, along with Stephen. I'm currently working on a matched pair of landcape images which I think will be next up. 

It's taken a lot of pressure off work wise because my shop no longer empties out alarmingly every time someone buys a few things and with greeting cards coming soon I can offer something for every pocket :)

Snails for all :)

 This week has been a very exciting one for me - I received my very first professional prints of three of my original drawings. I've been looking for months at various printers, choosing papers and getting test prints done before finally settling on the combination that I felt would give the best result across the board.

 I went for Hahnemuhle paper as it has a beautiful smooth white surface similar to the paper I draw on. It also holds black incredibly well so the prints are crisp and dramatic without losing any of the detail in the original.

 I had the snail and the hermit crab done as a set since they are the most popular images in my shop, along with Stephen. I'm currently working on a matched pair of landcape images which I think will be next up. 

It's taken a lot of pressure off work wise because my shop no longer empties out alarmingly every time someone buys a few things and with greeting cards coming soon I can offer something for every pocket :)

Wreckage

Saltwick bay photograph

I'm now around two thirds of the way through my first drawing of Saltwick Bay here in North Yorkshire. It started with a couple of snaps I'd taken while on holiday - I hadn't expected much from them because I didn't want to interrupt our time off by getting all artsy with the camera. When I got back, I looked at the one above and decided I could do something with it.

Hour 4 of my wreck and rock drawing

 As usual I'm working on Fabriano Artistico extra white - a lovely smooth paper great for getting sharp lines. I normally work in charcoal pencil but since the wreck cast a shadow you could almost reach out and touch, I needed something even blacker than that !

Hour  9 of my wreck and rock drawing

So, it's out with the Wolffs carbon pencil again - I love these because they produce such a rich, velvety black but unfortunately they also produce an amazing amount of fine dust that sticks to everything...

I'm also still using charcoal pencil for very fine detail, it's harder and can be sharpened to a needle point so I'm tracing the outlines with that, filling in with carbon and blending it up to the edge. That way I've got a lovely crisp silhouette with the added impact of the carbon. I'm hoping to have this one done in the next week or two as I'm keen to get stuck into its mate - a view of the imposing rock formation in the background. Will keep you posted :)

Eyeing up

There's great excitement here as we the launch of the Forgotten project- a joint venture between myself and Caroline Willmot looking at the mythological creatures of Britain. This has been a huge amount of fun to do as it's given me free reign to dismantle those creatures and rebuild in a way that works. 

The really fascinating thing is that when we started looking at all this from a scientific point of view - location, distribution, feeding and mating habits then building the anatomy - so many of these fantastic creatures suddenly became much more plausable. So, throw out everything you thought you knew about mermaids, fairies and goblins because they just got real !

 This drawing of a mermaids eye complete with protective membrane was done in charcoal and carbon pencil on Fabriano watercolour paper. It was a challenge to do as the face shape and skin texture are different to ours- they also have no hair. I could go on for hours but that's what the projects is for so you'll have to wait :)

We will be publishing this project in stages- one paper for each creature, which will be available from my Etsy shop. It's such a mammoth project that we decided each species deserved its own turn in the spotlight. 

We also need to say a huge thank you to my partner Rich for his imaginative input (many a happy hour spent discussing critters over a glass of wine or three). You can follow regular updates on Facebook.

My dark tower...

 We were lucky this weekend to be invited to join artist Tina Mammoser on a stay near Whitby. We only live up the road but working from home, it's somehow so much harder to organise time away so we jumped at the opportunity. On Sunday, we braved the weather to go explore Saltwick Bay, at one end of which stands the impressive Black Nab, which I naturally made a beeline for...

Black rock formation on a bed of shale, sillhouetted against a cloudy sky - what more could a goth artist ask for ? Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, we dicovered that close by lie the remains of the Admiral Von Tromp which ran aground in 1976 under mysterious circumstances.

 

 

 Many people have obviously taken amazing photographs of the rich landscape there and I'm not going to pretend I've achieved anything of the sort but the great thing about being an artist is... it doesn't matter :) I've picked these three to start working on and I'll do more editing to bring out the reflections on the rock but for quick snaps taken on the hoof, I'm really rather pleased. I'll definitely be going back but I can see the potential for charcoal drawings in these so I'm just going to get on with it.

You can remind me I said that.